The Sahara, Part 2

Ted. For starters, I noticed that the videos in Judy's post the other day did not show up in the automatically generated email that went out. I'm not sure why that happened. If you received the email but didn't get to see the videos, you can always visit out blog site and see them there. Just go to losingsightshore.blogspot.com. Note that I've included a video in this post so again, you may not see it in the emailed version.

This is a follow to the post I did on November 6 which ended when Linda, Judy and I arrived at our desert camp near Mhamid, Morocco by camel. 

The camp consisted of a circle of large tents. With a capacity of about 50, it was relatively luxurious and featured a dining tent and bathroom building with flush toilets, sinks and hot showers. Rugs were scattered throughout the tents and in some of the open areas in the center. Lights were battery powered.

 

After a welcoming tea, we scrambled up a dune to watch the sunset. Definitely worth it! After dark, we were served a nice dinner (no wine, though). This was followed by our host, Kassim playing a drum and singing some Berber songs. We headed out to check out the stars but there were clouds that night.

The next day, we were scheduled to drive three more hours to another desert camp. We were having so much fun at this camp that our driver, Abdoul shifted our reservations to spend a second night at this camp. The change freed up the  day to explore the nearby village of Mhamid. Things were hopping as that weekend, the town was hosting a music festival.

We explored the old part of the village, including a ruined 14^th century mosque and visited a ladies cooperative where local handicrafts were sold. 

Note date scrawled on wall - 1364

Women's coop. Note - no photos of the ladies

We then drove out into the desert to visit the Festival Taragalte, sort of a nomad Woodstock. We just saw a warm up act as the big name groups weren’t going to perform til much later that night. To hear some of the music from one of the headliners, go to YouTube and search for "Oum-Taragalte."

Festival

Music fans

We had lunch at a restaurant run by family of Tuareg, one of the nomadic tribes from the Western Sahara. The owner prepared tea for us the old fashioned way - quite a process.

Then it was back to camp. That night we were entertained in our camp by a group of Berber singers and drummers .  And on this night we saw stars. Oh, my... Judy was happy! The next day, after watching the sunrise, we hit the road. 

The way back gets another blog post. Here's a video showing the area around our camp. Oh - don't bother adjusting the sound level. There weren't any sounds where we were.